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Illnesses due to over acidity
Many common diseases are related, directly or indirectly, to over acidity, says macrobiotic teacher Herman Aihara. They include ailments such as acid reflux, gout and gastric ulcers that are clearly due to an acidic body environment. But they also include many others that are less obvious.
This article formed part of a series based on macrobiotic lectures that Herman Aihara gave in Singapore in 1995. Following that, I published an entire issue of The Good Life, summarising his key teachings in Singapore. Herman Aihara passed away on 25 February 1998 and Cornelia Aihara passed away exactly eight years later, on 25 February 2006.
Over acidity is by far the most serious health problem faced by people today, according to Herman Aihara, macrobiotic teacher and author of Acid and Alkaline. This is not surprising when we see that the modern diet is made up of mostly acid-forming foods: meat, eggs, dairy foods, oily food, refined flour products, sugar, food chemicals and drugs. Certain lifestyle factors, like stress and shallow breathing, tend to produce an acidic condition as well. Holding back one’s emotions has a similar effect. Some ailments are obviously due to an acidic condition. Gastric pain and ulcers result from excess acids damaging the stomach lining. Likewise, too much stomach acid causes acid reflux, or heartburn. Click here to understand why milk is not a solution to gastric pain and ulcers, but it actually worsens the situation by causing over acidity.
Gout Gout arises when uric acid – a by-product of meat and other high protein foods – accumulates in the joints of the feet, causing swelling and intense pain. Doctors commonly advise gout patients to stop eating beans, saying that beans produce uric acids. This is true. But it is equally true that meat is the main acid-forming food in the modern diet – and therefore the main cause of gout. Yet doctors typically keep silent about meat. Likewise, doctors generally keep silent about sugar, chemicals, refined flour and other strong-acid forming foods. Many gout patients therefore take great pains to avoid beans while they happily eat all the meat, sugar, chemicals and other acid-forming foods they want. They continue to suffer. And they think that gout cannot be cured. In fact, gout is relatively easy to cure – just reduce acid-forming foods like meat, sugar and chemicals, and eat plenty of alkaline forming foods like vegetables.
Acidosis Another ailment is “acidosis” meaning over acidity. This happens when the blood pH falls from a healthy level of 7.4 (slightly alkaline) to below 7.0 (acidic). Acidosis affects the central nervous system. The sufferer first becomes disoriented, then enters a coma (when the blood pH drops a below 6.9), and finally dies. Click here to read Part II of this article, about many other ailments caused by over acidity, although they are less obvious cases.
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